He knocked on the steel door at the top step. “Hello?”

“Come in, Jack,” said a voice from somewhere on the other side. “It’s open.”

Inside he found Glaeken slumped in an easy chair in the apartment’s great room, sipping coffee as he stared out at the morning sky through the panoramic windows.

Jack slowed as he approached, struck by his appearance. He was as big as ever; his shoulders just as broad, his hair as gray, his eyes as blue. But he looked older today. Okay, the guy was old-he measured his age in millennia-but this morning, in this unguarded moment, he looked it. Jack hadn’t been by since the Internet mess. Could Glaeken have aged so much since then?

“You okay?”

He straightened and smiled, and some-but not all-of the extra years dropped away. “Fine, fine. Just tired. Magda had a bad night.”

His aged wife’s memory had been slipping away for years and was little more than vapor now. Glaeken radiated devotion to her, and Jack knew he’d hoped they’d grow old together. The old part had worked out, but not the together. Glaeken was alone. Someone named Magda might be in a bedroom down the hall, but the mind of the woman he’d fallen in love with had left the building.

“Didn’t the nurse-?”

“Yes, she did what she could, but sometimes I’m the only one who can calm her.”

Jack shook his head. Like the old guy needed more stress in his life.

“Have you seen the Lady? I stopped in to check on how she’s doing but her place is empty.”

She occupied the apartment just below. Couldn’t say she lived here, because the Lady wasn’t alive in the conventional sense.

“You just missed her.” Glaeken gestured to the window. “She went for her morning walk in the park.”

“Really? When did she start that?”

“Almost a week now.”

Jack stepped to the glass and stared down at Central Park, far below. A little to the left, ringed by winter-bare trees, the grass of the Sheep Meadow showed brown through patches of leftover snow.